System design of aircraft air conditioning system (1st report: Effect of component for high-pressure water separation on system operation)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the effect of a component for high-pressure water separation, which is included in the air conditioning system of the general commercial aircrafts, on the air-cycle operation (reverse Brayton cycle); the high-pressure water separation consists of water separator and two heat exchangers called reheater and condenser, respectively. This paper briefly describes the typical system configuration of the air-cycle refrigeration progressed with evolutions in turbofan engine. Since nowadays, 4-Wheel air-cycle has been a trend on the aircraft air conditioning system, this paper theoretically shows its advantage on the basis of the thermodynamic cycle study. In the following chapters, an analysis was conducted on the interaction between a reheater and a condenser when each heat transfer performance changes from the baseline operating point. Also, the comparative study was made on the system performances by the 3-wheel and 4-wheel air-cycle. In addition, this paper describes how the heat transfer performance is designed for the reheater and the condenser under the system requirements for the entire air conditioning system.